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Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)

BACKGROUND: An improved understanding of the structural and functional development of the paediatric foot is fundamental to a strong theoretical framework for health professionals and scientists. An infant’s transition from sitting, through crawling and cruising, to walking is when the structures an...

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Autores principales: Price, Carina, McClymont, Juliet, Hashmi, Farina, Morrison, Stewart C., Nester, Christopher
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6011338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29951118
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13047-018-0273-2
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author Price, Carina
McClymont, Juliet
Hashmi, Farina
Morrison, Stewart C.
Nester, Christopher
author_facet Price, Carina
McClymont, Juliet
Hashmi, Farina
Morrison, Stewart C.
Nester, Christopher
author_sort Price, Carina
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: An improved understanding of the structural and functional development of the paediatric foot is fundamental to a strong theoretical framework for health professionals and scientists. An infant’s transition from sitting, through crawling and cruising, to walking is when the structures and function of the foot must adapt to bearing load. The adaptation of skin and other hard and soft tissue, and foot and gait biomechanics, during this time is poorly understood. This is because data characterising the foot tissue and loading pre-walking onset does not exist. Of the existing kinematic and plantar pressure data, few studies have collected data which reflects the real-life activities of infants with modern equipment. METHODS: This is a longitudinal study and part of the Great Foundations Initiative, a collaborative project between the University of Brighton and the University of Salford, which is seeking to improve foot health in children. Two cohorts of 50 infants will be recruited at the two sites (University of Brighton, Eastbourne, UK and University of Salford, Salford, UK). Infants will be recruited when they first reach for their feet and attend four laboratory visits at milestones related to foot loading, with experienced independent walking being the final milestone. Data collection will include tissue characteristics (skin thickness, texture, elasticity, pH and tendon thickness and cross-sectional area), plantar pressures and kinematics captured during real world locomotion tasks. DISCUSSION: This study will provide a database characterising the development of the infant foot as it becomes a weight bearing structure. The data will allow effective comparison and quantification of changes in structure and function due to maturation and loading by measuring pre and post established walking. Additional variables which impact on the development of the foot (gender, ethnicity and body weight) will also be factored into our analysis. This will help us to advance understanding of the determinants of foot development in early childhood.
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spelling pubmed-60113382018-06-27 Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study) Price, Carina McClymont, Juliet Hashmi, Farina Morrison, Stewart C. Nester, Christopher J Foot Ankle Res Study Protocol BACKGROUND: An improved understanding of the structural and functional development of the paediatric foot is fundamental to a strong theoretical framework for health professionals and scientists. An infant’s transition from sitting, through crawling and cruising, to walking is when the structures and function of the foot must adapt to bearing load. The adaptation of skin and other hard and soft tissue, and foot and gait biomechanics, during this time is poorly understood. This is because data characterising the foot tissue and loading pre-walking onset does not exist. Of the existing kinematic and plantar pressure data, few studies have collected data which reflects the real-life activities of infants with modern equipment. METHODS: This is a longitudinal study and part of the Great Foundations Initiative, a collaborative project between the University of Brighton and the University of Salford, which is seeking to improve foot health in children. Two cohorts of 50 infants will be recruited at the two sites (University of Brighton, Eastbourne, UK and University of Salford, Salford, UK). Infants will be recruited when they first reach for their feet and attend four laboratory visits at milestones related to foot loading, with experienced independent walking being the final milestone. Data collection will include tissue characteristics (skin thickness, texture, elasticity, pH and tendon thickness and cross-sectional area), plantar pressures and kinematics captured during real world locomotion tasks. DISCUSSION: This study will provide a database characterising the development of the infant foot as it becomes a weight bearing structure. The data will allow effective comparison and quantification of changes in structure and function due to maturation and loading by measuring pre and post established walking. Additional variables which impact on the development of the foot (gender, ethnicity and body weight) will also be factored into our analysis. This will help us to advance understanding of the determinants of foot development in early childhood. BioMed Central 2018-06-20 /pmc/articles/PMC6011338/ /pubmed/29951118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13047-018-0273-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Study Protocol
Price, Carina
McClymont, Juliet
Hashmi, Farina
Morrison, Stewart C.
Nester, Christopher
Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title_full Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title_fullStr Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title_full_unstemmed Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title_short Development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the Small Steps study)
title_sort development of the infant foot as a load bearing structure: study protocol for a longitudinal evaluation (the small steps study)
topic Study Protocol
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6011338/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29951118
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13047-018-0273-2
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